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Jumper

In the movie Jumper, young men are pursued by an Inquisition like figure, Samuel L Jackson playing Roland Cox, the leader of the Paladins. He thinks he is doing the world a favour.

The main characters, David Rice played by Hayden Christensen and Griffin played by Jamie Bell, develop a form of “special power” that arises after some form of trauma that allows them to use it. There are echoes of the nature of Shamanism. Medicine men that are given access to “another world” after an illness or trauma.

The film portrays the power as more like something that “is not supposed to happen”. It’s impossible. A “freak of nature”.

At one point the Jackson character says to Rice’s pleading that “they always go bad in the end”.

This film is a masterpieceof portraying discrimination and prejudice. The suppression and killing of people that are regarded as “freaks”.

This is a very real fight. I’m afraid the persecution of Witches in the Middle Ages did not end then. It still lives on in our modern world.

Take the language of the modern health system that treats people with emotional problems. Replace their word that they use to describe people like that, with the word “Witch” and suddenly that entire little world makes sense.

“Is he showing signs of madness?” (replace the word madness with any of the technical terms).

Could be … “Is he showing signs of associating with the Devil?”.

“Do you hear voices?”

Could be replaced with … “Do you talk to the spirit world? This is the work of the Devil!”.

I don’t regard these as spurious comparisons. Look at the play “The Crucible” that was written in the 1950’s at the time of McCarthyism.

Today it is so called “Mental Patients” that become a convenient scapegoat for the paranoias of society. Look at The Crucible. It is an examination of how a “Witch Hunt” can become a way for the petty jealousies and insecurities of people to be projected onto the people around them.

I am not talking idle philosophy here, these are very real threats. The accusers do not wield the Bible and the Stake here. They have authority to use so called “medications” that can kill. This is no secret. Read the insert for these “medications”. They can cause suicidal thoughts, which, of course may be acted upon. They have a whole list of “side effects” associated with them.

This “Side effect” has a name. It is fundamentalism.

It’s reductionist. Linear. Atomic. There is no appreciation of the strangeness of life. The unknowability.

Someone I know was almost killed as a very young child. He was showing signs of being what we just call today, intelligent, but might have been known as “sensitive” in the past. Predicting events before they happen, like a dog that recognises that his owner is coming home hours before the event. Knowing things “he shouldn’t know”. Asking questions.

Apparently Science has deemed that some people’s behaviour is not acceptable. Well, that’s the excuse. Actually I think it’s a Fundamentalism hiding behind Science. The Scientific Method recognises that there is an unknown that cannot essentially be known ! This is the whole point of the Scientific Method. To be able to lay down knowledge of that unknown. So to claim that it is Science that has “proven” that certain people need treating is indeed absurd.

No, this is the same thing that the ancient healing women (“Witches”) had to put up with. The current state of affairs with the modern health system is very similar. I’d say identical. Patients “hear voices”. “Babbling in strange voices”. There is no test to prove that someone suffers from the myriad of unproven diseases in that field. A patient is left to sink or swim after having a barrage of cruel treatments fired at them. If they die, or commit suicide, then well, they must have been ill. Their death proves that the doctors were right all along, and that the patient was actually OK and on the road to recovery.

However, if they survive, then the treatments must be working. The patient then must have something wrong with them that is one of the many diseases that they are labelled with. They can no longer trust their own mind … they are possessed of the Devil ! A Witch.

Jump.

DJ Barney

Addenum: I feel it’s appropriate to add a link to here for anyone in this situation that needs help.

"... Suppression and spinning of negative data and ghostwriting have emerged as tools to help manage medical journal publications to best suit product sales, while disease mongering and market segmentation of physicians are also used to efficiently maximize profits. We propose that while evidence-based medicine is a noble ideal, marketing-based medicine is the current reality."